By Msafiri Peter
As
many as 13 senior leaders of al-Nusra Front, including the terror
group's military commander, were killed in two Syrian airstrikes
Thursday, a Middle Eastern security source who was briefed by Syrian
intelligence.
Abu Hammam al Shami was among those killed in the strikes against al-Nusra, al Qaeda's largest affiliate in Syria, the source said. Syria's state news agency SANA also reported al Shami's death.
The
special operation that took place in Hobait, in Idlib province, was
part of a wider effort by Syrian forces to destroy areas believed to be
gathering points for al-Nusra militants around the province, according
to SANA.
According to a 2014 al-Nusra video, al Shami joined the group after years of training in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Also killed in the northwestern province of Idlib was a senior Saudi operative in the group, the source said.
There
were initial indications that al-Nusra leader Abu Mohammed al Jolani
was wounded in one of the strikes, the source said Thursday. But on
Friday.
The
strikes took place in the towns of Salqin and Hobait, both near the
city of Saraqeb in Idlib. One strike targeted a meeting of senior
al-Nusra Front leaders; the other was on a home being used as a base,
the source said.
A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition that is hitting ISIS targets in Syria said its planes weren't involved.
"Within
the last 24 hours, we have not conducted any airstrikes within 200
miles of the province of Idlib," the spokesman said earlier Thursday.
Important figure
Al
Shami was featured in a March 2014 video released by al-Nusra Front, in
which he discussed his failed attempt to mediate between his militants
and ISIS after rising tensions between the groups.
The
video included a biography by the group of al Shami, which was
translated by the Long War Journal. It said that in the late 1990s, al
Shami traveled to Afghanistan, where he was trained in a camp run by Abu
Musab al Suri, a veteran Syrian jihadi strategist.
Al Shami then trained in al Qaeda camps, where he met one of the 9/11 hijackers and personally swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
By the time of the 9/11 attacks, al Shami had started to train recruits
in Afghanistan and was named as the head of the Syrian jihadist
contingent within al Qaeda.
After the
fall of the Taliban, he fled Afghanistan with senior Egyptian al Qaeda
operative Sayf al Adel, the group said in the video. Al Shami began
operating in Iraq,
where he began working with al Qaeda in Iraq founder Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, conducting training for the group during the Iraqi
insurgency, the al-Nusra video stated.
In 2005, al Shami returned to Afghanistan for a short period, at the request of al Qaeda's leadership.
When
he got to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, one of bin Laden's top
deputies, Attiyah Abd al Rahman, tasked al Shami with leading al Qaeda
efforts in Syria, but he was arrested as he traveled through Lebanon,
according to the video, and was detained for five years. After being
released, he found his way to Syria, where he joined al-Nusra, the group
said.
